Thursday, May 26, 2011

High Tea with Mrs Woo

Last night was a bit of a wild and woolly night in Newcastle but I braved the conditions and was lucky enough to attend a seminar put on by Renew Newcastle. The presenters were the three sister design collaboration - Rowena, Juliana and Angela Foong who are 'High Tea with Mrs Woo'.

It was wonderful to hear about their passion, starting out with $1000 each, buying an op shop in Darby Street Newcastle, where they manipulated some of the clothing, then deciding to make their own range partly due to the hay fever experienced from the 2nd hand clothing.

As they say on their website; We stumbled into the world of fashion design by winning the 2005 NSW Mercedes Start-Up Awards and the AUSTRADE-POWERHOUSE Market Development Award. This led us to the runways of Shanghai Fashion Week (China) and Australian Fashion Week (Sydney + Melbourne). The unique craft and style of our work invited formal exhibitions with the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art (Adelaide) and Object Gallery (Sydney).

Not bad for a couple of Newcastle girls.

Sounds like they've had a great time, but have worked really hard, sewing from 8.30am to 2.30am each day, and have now gone from earning about 50c per hour, to about $15 per hour! (They now outsource their sewing to Sydney).